Nice quick summary of the current status quo of virtual/real world convergence, though I still think that people take ‘Second Life’ far too seriously, and the google earth/MS Earth tools aren’t showing the potential to have make any substantive changes to our existence yet. (No time to really comment right now, hopefully I will come back to this. I really need to add a link blog to this site.)
Life is becoming more digital and digital is becoming more alive. On one hand we have the rapid rise of Second Life and other virtual worlds. On the other we are beginning to annotate our planet with digital information, via technologies like Google Earth. In both cases digital information is breaking geographical boundaries and overcoming the limitations imposed by our physical world. Flying in second life has the same affect as linking a Wikipedia entry to the Grand Canyon as rendered in Google Earth.
Information is being unleashed and re-shuffled. We are beginning to look at information from literally a 1000 foot view. And everything is becoming increasingly more connected. This is both very exciting and a bit unnerving. We are accelerating into our digital future from all directions – pushing digital towards life and pushing life towards digital.
